When 007'ship begins to strike you as too expensive, too strenuous, or (above all) too juvenile a pursuit, the time has come to make the switch to M'ship. The biggest change you'll notice is that you follow your new role more or less for it's own sake.

M's have no perceptible sex life. Indeed, you now look down on the amorous activities - or 'womanizing' - of 007s [FRWL 12, etc.], and probably of everyone else too.

You establish your claim to a maritime past by installing an ex-Chief Petty Officer as your butler [OHMSS 20] and an ex-Leading Stoker as your chauffeur [DN 2], by hanging a battle-cruiser's bell at your door and naval prints on your study walls [OHMSS 20], and by purporting to belong to The Senior, that greatest of all Services' clubs in the world [YOLT 2] - though you rarely go there because of the amount of shop talked and the number of inquisitive former shipmates to be met with. (Bribing people to call you "Admiral" is a quicker way of seeming naval.)

You must also establish your claim to pulling in 36,500 pounds a year, with a Rolls and driver thrown in [OHMSS 20]. How you do this must remain your own affair. But you certainly don't do it by lavish entertaining. One guest in three gets one whisky about every four hours at your place [OHMSS 22]. It remains to offer a skeleton briefing along the lines already adopted for 007s.

Looks

You have a hard [T 1], lined [M 2], weatherbeaten [G 5], sailor's face , the skin of which is luminous with health, pink and well scrubbed [T 1, G 5]. It's topped by iron-grey hair [T 1] and features a pair of bright, brooding, calm, clear, in fact damnably clear, cold, commanding, grey, quiet, shrewd, uncompromising, watchful, sailor's eyes [DN 2,YOLT 3, T 1, CR 2, T 1, FRWL 12, G 7, M 25, M 2, LALD 2, M 9, DN 2, T 7].

Since you never go near a woman, you can do what 007s can't and call in a cosmetics expert. He'll have trouble fixing up those eyes, though.

Clothes and Accessories

Dark-grey suit, stiff white collar, dark-blue bow tie with spots, rather loosely tied, rimless eyeglass, used only for reading menus, on thin black cord [M 4]. This, plus a large blue silk bandanna handkerchief [DN 2], is all the specific guidance we can offer you here. But it shouldn't be difficult to think up a relaxing outfit, pyjamas, bathing attire, etc., suitable for a sexless, tight-fisted, weatherbeaten, damnably clear-eyed old ex-admiral.

Food and Drink

Lunching at your favourite club (not The Senior), eat a grilled Dover sole and the ripest spoonful you can gouge from the Stilton, drink an Algerian red too bad to be allowed on the wine list [TMWTGG 3]. Your guests at home get given the Algerian, too, with perhaps a small glass of Marsala thrown in.

Before dining at your club, drink a whisky and soda or so [M 4]. Order this first and then say hospitably to your guest, "Sure you won't have anything?" Should he respond by asking for a vodka Martini, say "Rot-gut" disapprovingly, but don't actually refuse him.

At dinner eat Beluga caviar, devilled kidney and bacon, peas and new potatoes, strawberries in kirsch, and a marrow bone (M 5). You know this last is bad for you, but you can't resist it. Drink vodka with the caviar, of course, and a half-bottle of a twenty-year-old Mouton Rothschild with the kidney.

This sounds quite lavish, but you're not paying. At this club, where high stakes gambling is the main activity, the cost of all meals is deducted at the end of each week pro rata from the winners profits [M 5] - no wonder it's your favourite. You can thus well afford to allow your guest champagne and brandy [M 5].

Smokes

You're a pipe smoker, naturally [DAF 2, etc.]. You keep your tobacco in a jar made out of the base of a fourteen-pounder shell [DN 2]. (It won't hold much, but you've only yourself to cater for.) You don't use a lighter, only matches, and are quite extravagant with these. In addition, you allow yourself two thin black cheroots a day [OHMSS 21]. As noted in Smokes, very bad people use these too, but, as also noted there, this must be coincidence.

Car

Your Rolls, mentioned earlier, is an old black one, Phantom [TMWTGG 3] or Silver Wraith [DN 2]. It has nondescript number plates, in keeping with your general modesty and hatred of affectation.

Gambling

Stick to games you know you can win at, like piquet [M 4], or if you do get involved in a bridge session for high stakes [M 6-7], make sure your partner has stacked the deck beforehand.

Chat

Equip yourself with a repertoire of prejudiced, reactionary remarks like

What you say is less important than how you say it. Always speak abruptly [DN 2], angrily [YOLT 3], contemptuously [DN 3], roughly [FYEO 4], sharply [DAF 2], shortly [M 2], sourly [DN 3], and/or testily [G 5].

Places

Apart from a fortnight's trout-fishing on the Test in September [YOLT 2], you never move off the triangular circuit of your job, your favourite club in St. James's Street and your beautiful small Regency manor-house on the edge of Windsor Forest [OHMSS 21]. If you feel that this doesn't give you much of a chance of cutting a public dash as an M, forget it. The character you're modeling yourself on never bothered with other people's reactions.

Culture

You do water-colours of the wild orchids of England in the meticulous but uninspired fashion of the naturalists of the Nineteenth century [OHMSS 21]. Nothing else. You may hold 'The Times' up in front of yourself while lunching, but not to read it [TMWTGG 3]. It's a barricade. Rather an unnecessary one, perhaps.